A&P, Almacs Once Dominated But Are Now Gone—What Is Stop & Shop’s Fate?
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Southern New England has been dominated by three supermarket chains over the past century.
First, there was A&P, then Almacs, and followed by Stop & Shop. Both A&P and Almacs have closed —bankrupt and liquidated.
Approximately 31,000 Stop & Shop workers have been on strike for the past week tied to a labor dispute relating to pension and healthcare costs. The fate of Stop & Shop is also impacted by mega-online retailer Amazon that looms over nearly all consumer behavior.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAnd, Stop & Shop workers’ fate is threatened by growing automation. The company has already deployed “Marty,” a robot that detects aisle spills.
A&P — Walmart Before Walmart, Close Rhode Island Ties
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company is better known as A&P. The company was once one of the most dominant retailing brands in the world, founded in 1859 by George Gilman before turning the company’s management over to George Huntington Hartford.
Huntington Hartford was the grandfather of Nuala Pell — philanthropist, socialite, and the wife of U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell. The Pells' wealth was estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
By 1930, A&P was the world's largest retailer, reached $2.9 billion in sales with 16,000 stores.
It was vertically integrated — the company manufactured many of its own products.
By the 1950s, competitors emerged and the decline was swift. In the 1970s the company was in distress and the heirs sold their interests in the company.
Almacs - Rhode Island's Supermarket
Almacs is considered the last Rhode Island-owned grocery chain and at its height, it had 43 locations located in RI and MA.
"In 1952, Almacs introduced Rhode Island to S&H Green Stamps, which helped retain customer loyalty for three decades. Almacs purchased Providence Public Markets in 1953 and grew to become the largest supermarket chain in Rhode Island before the end of the 1960s," according to a bio of Almacs founder Allen Pike.
The retailer began in 1942 in Rhode Island, but on December 14, 1995, the doors closed at Almacs.
Eerily similar, the Almacs company fought with the union — the same United Food and Commercial Workers union.
“Almacs Inc., a supermarket operator based in Providence, R.I., filed yesterday for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code as part of a proposed financial restructuring,” wrote the New York Times in 1993.
“Almacs, which has about $100 million of debt to be restructured, said it expected normal operations to continue at its 43 stores in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It said it intended to pay for the delivery of goods for its stores in the ordinary course of business while it prepared a restructuring plan. The company said the bankruptcy filing listed assets of $166 million and liabilities of $150 million.”
Stop & Shop
"The Stop & Shop strike is the latest sign that widespread worker angst isn’t subsiding. The supermarket stoppage is nearly as big as the strike that shut down all of West Virginia’s schools last year (25,000 teachers participated in that strike, compared to 31,000 grocery store workers now)," writes VOX.
Threats from corporate cost-cutting, automation, and increased competition are driving the Stop & Shop demands.
“Stop & Shop can buy as many ads as they want, but they can’t change the facts,” United Food & Commercial Workers said in a statement. “Stop & Shop’s latest proposal will drastically increase out-of-pocket health care costs, kick approximately 1,000 employees off of their health care plan, and make it more challenging for 31,000 people to provide for themselves and their families.”
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